


Evidence

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU-unpowered, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime Lab AU, M/M, cameos for other Marvel characters, except of course I don't have any crime lab expertise so wave hands as needed, there is marital infidelity in the non-Clint/Coulson part of the story which no one is unhappy about, there is pre-story Coulson/OMC, think of this as CSI:Hawkeye, you might guess from the CSI aspect that we're starting with a murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 09:41:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10357521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Clint is the guy who goes to the crime scene with a camera and finds all the evidence.  Coulson is the guy all the evidence initially points to, and that's a problem.  Because naturally, he's entirely Clint's type, because that's just the way Clint's life IS.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those fics I have been poking at intermittently for months and months. I hope this doesn't mean I've introduced inconsistencies I can no longer see, but as ever, if you see typos or things I should have tagged or whatever, feel free to say if you want to.

The crime scene is a mess, which is hardly unusual, but Clint stops on his way in anyway because something about the particular arrangement of the mess bothers him in a way he can’t immediately identify.

Which _is_ unusual.

There’s blood everywhere (of course there is; arterial spray can gush pretty good and the initial reports said four distinct deep stab wounds any one of which might well have been fatal, if left untreated very long), and of course there is a void where the perpetrator must have been standing, but something about it bugs Clint’s hindbrain and so before he goes any further into the room he pulls out the camera and starts clicking just to get the view specifically from the doorway.

Hell, maybe it’s just that murder scenes at 4:48am are a terrible start to the day.

“Hey, Barton. You gonna solve this from over there or what?” Bucky shakes his hair out of his eyes and stands up from where he’s been crouched over the half-dressed body, stepping carefully in the plastic covers over his heavy boots. He points at the corpse and holds up an evidence bag in which is the apparent murder weapon, a heavy-handled knife with a six-inch blade. “Mister Greg Chambers, Clint Barton. Barton, Greg Chambers, who we think has probably been lying here in a cooling state for about four hours, give or take.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Clint takes a pic of Bucky being an unrepentant smartass mugging for the camera because Steve will like it and everyone likes doing things to make Steve happy.

“Course y’are, it was _me_ talking. So, you got it all figured out yet?” 

Okay, so Clint has something of a reputation for stepping in and immediately seeing the clues, and he’s good at putting the information together fast. He flips Bucky off. “Nah, but does something about this scene strike you as off?” 

“Besides the dead guy?” 

“Uh, yeah. The dead guy is pretty much a given in homicide scenes.” Clint sets his bag down just inside the door and steps forward, looking up and around him. He takes in the nearby couch (beige, boring except for the spatter) and single chair (also beige, boring, clearly not for comfortable lounging), as well end tables at both ends of the couch and mass-produced art and unimaginatively placed diplomas and certificates on the wall. Evidently, Greg Chambers was a CPA, took some additional courses that added more letters, and occasionally held client meetings in his office for which no coffee table, but easy access to fancy pens and neatly-laid-out legal pads, was required. 

“Well, there’s a rubber in the trash and this dude has lube kinda all over, barely even smeared past, you know, the obvious asshole region--so I’m pretty sure there’s a suspect to be had.”

“Lube and a left-behind condom probably say not a sex crime, though.” Clint snaps a pic of the ceiling where there are, as expected, four significant sprays of blood drops. “I mean, right? Why be all thorough with your lubing up if you don’t care about the other guy’s comfort, and leaving evidence is just fucking stupid.”

“Could be a tryst gone wrong though.”

“Yeah, obviously given he’s not actually dressed again after—you check for anything else?”

“What, like, this wedding ring?” Bucky crouches again and taps the end of his prosthetic against the guy’s far hand, making a metallic clinking sound.

“Could be a husband, then?” Clint snaps a shot of a bloody footprint, a smooth, flat-bottomed shoe, something classy. Maybe size eleven? Ten and a half? He drops a marker next to it and takes another picture, drops a ruler for scale and takes one more.

“Sure, but the pic on the desk suggests wife. I mean, not to be crude but we might find out she has a dick when we talk to her—“

“Or she doesn’t, but has unexpectedly large feet for, what do you think here, five foot three or four? Not that any of that is all that relevant, but either way that seems like a pretty unlikely scenario. Usually if this level of violence is about sex, it’s very…sexualized violence, you know?”

“This is not a conversation I ever would have had in cybercrime.”

“Broadening your horizons Buck. It’s good for ya.” Clint keeps taking pictures, of the two additional clear prints and the smudged ones beyond, heading for the door, the blood pools around and under the guy, the congealed mess where his tie is stuck to the high-end beige carpet. “What do we have about the company?” 

Stark speaks up from the doorway. “Yuck, this is not how accounting departments are supposed to look.”

“You here to help or complain?” Clint goes around, gets a shot of the wedding ring on the guy’s curled finger where it rests, along with clear images of the defensive wounds on his hands, then, satisfied he’s recorded exactly how the body lay, glances at Buck and gestures that they should roll him.

“Help, asshole, like I’d be here for some other reason what the fuck,” Stark says. He’s great with tech and rendering the 3D holography they’ll use to re-examine the scene later, but his social skills, well, Clint figures he probably could have used more structure and hugs as a kid, both. He knows a thing or two about that himself. “Scanner says there are two cells broadcasting for GPS in here, so—oh hey, there’s one of them.”

Sure enough, there’s a blood-soaked phone under the left side of the guy’s ribcage. Bucky finishes settling him while Clint clicks away again, then hands over a sample bag. The phone must have fallen first because the carpet beneath it is perfectly clean, leaving a precise rounded-corner rectangle where it was.

“Blood’s still wet,” Bucky notes. He puts the phone in the bag carefully, avoiding any smears in case there are prints Clint’s pics didn’t get, then stands again. “I’m gonna get this back to Steve and start running down the wife. Not literally.”

“Oh, not literally. You sure? Stark, where’s the other phone?”

“Hey, I was just here to make sure you looked for both. Also, that dude looks a lot like you, I mean build and coloring and whatever, kinda creepy actually, think I’ll stop considering the similarities. Uh, phone. It’s probably in the desk. Or the briefcase. Or some other gore-bedecked gross place. I don’t know. Somewhere over there.” He waves toward the area that encompasses, sure enough, both the desk and the briefcase. “Meanwhile, I’m going to go talk to the security system. Oh, and make sure you get accurate room dimensions for sims. I can use blueprints, but as-built is better. Yeah?”

Clint waves him away (seriously, the as-built in a building this modern is usually no more than about two millimeters different from the plans because the plans get updated as the building goes up anyway, but then, the one time he doesn’t measure it’ll be way off, but he _knows that, Stark_ , honestly) and starts in on photographing the front of the body as found. Muscular legs and forearms, decently-defined abs, no real identifying marks except for a bruise on the front of the inner thigh that’s definitely a hickey. “Glad your last night was a winner, man,” Clint says to the guy. “If ya gotta go, there’s worse options.”

When he has every angle there, he goes back to the door and clicks a couple of shots of the frame and the hallway outside, then he heads for the desk, dusting for and collecting prints around the vicinity of the seat area before gloving up and opening each drawer.

The phone is in the back of the middle side drawer, although it’s not particularly hidden. Clint picks it up and taps the screen. It’s not locked and promptly pops up a recent-activity screen that includes two calls last night, so he shrugs, takes a picture of what’s showing (yeah, they can get that data elsewhere, but he likes actual images in his own camera, sue him), and then, after hesitating a moment, calls the number (just a number, no name) last dialed, last night, ten-forty.

“Hey.” It’s a man who answers, a man who at first impression sounds, although of course this is all conjecture, like he’s probably forty-something, relatively well-educated, in decent shape, and a little bit no-nonsense with a hint of hilarious asshole thrown in. What, Clint _hears_ things, too; he’s not all about the camera. Although given he’s kind of just described his perfect man, most likely when they find him it’ll be a disappointment. He also sounds sort of surprisingly alert for ass o’clock in the morning, but maybe he’s just still up. “Again already? Greg—“

“Not Greg,” Clint says. “Who’m I talking to?”

There’s a significant pause while something clicks, and Clint grins. Bastard’s taping him. Smart, if he needs to be able to prove anything he said later. Maybe he won’t be a disappointment. Finally, the guy comes back, his no-nonsensitude dialed up to high. “So, not-Greg, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Name’s Clint. I work with the crime lab. Who’m I talking to?”

“And you have Greg’s phone. That suggests something unfortunate.”

“You sound pretty calm about the prospect.”

“In my experience, losing my calm almost never ends well. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Clint pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it for a second. “Well, to begin with, your number is the last number called, very late last night. Wanna tell me why?”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Mr. Chambers’ office. I’m assuming you know it?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Uh. Maybe that’s not a good—“ Clint stops when he realizes the call has ended. But it kind of really _is_ not a good idea; among other things, having the man show up in the crime scene would make it harder to show his presence during the window of the murder. Plus, the scene is a little upsetting, seriously, even for people like Clint and Bucky who are old hands at this shit. Okay, Bucky is less old, as hands go, but still. He doesn’t really need a civilian showing up and vomiting all over everything, which is a distressingly common response to particularly blood-soaked scenes.

Clint sighs, tosses the phone in an evidence bag, and gets to work on the measurements for Stark before taking more pictures. He wants to be done and close the door before the guy shows up for all of the above reasons, and because there will already be some explaining to do about the phone call in the first place. _Jesus, Clint, what were you thinking,_ , he asks himself, only pre-echoing what he’s pretty sure Bruce is going to ask when he gets back to the lab. Bruce is mister Zen about 98% of the time, but Clint’s seen him get actually angry, and it’s among his life goals to not focus that on himself, so he tries to keep his fuckups well shy of the epic zone.

He finishes up everything he can think of to shoot with a good six minutes to spare, and circles back around the desk to make sure Bucky got everything that might be important. He plucks a pale thread out of the narrow space between the edge of the flexible clear desk mat and the wood surface (could be relevant, or not, but it’s not bloody), and is just dropping it in a baggie when there’s a sound at the door.

He looks up, and there’s a man in dark slacks and a tie, jacket open, shoes (size eleven, Clint guesses) mostly shiny but with the kind of scuffing that suggests he cares about his appearance but not to the extent it keeps him from any particular activity. He has a high hairline, probably receding fast, and thick-framed glasses Clint immediately thinks are legitimate lenses but a frame chosen to make him look nerdier than he is. Or rather, as nerdy, but to distract from the fact he also has a shoulder holster under the jacket and a clear trigger-finger callus. 

“Not-Greg, I assume,” the man says. His eyes are all over the room, assessing the scene and pausing on the voids and soaked-in areas in the carpet before the desk. Clint notes his shoes, probably not the ones that left the prints, but the size is right.

“You still seem real calm, man, but don’t—“

“Come in, although there’s hardly any point; you’ll find me all over the room and in the trash unless custodial emptied it before calling 9-1-1.”

Clint raises his eyebrows. “Then, you were here…?”

“Until about eleven-forty, I think, maybe fifty? There’s really no reason not to tell you that.”

“I see.” Clint zips up his bag. “Well, maybe we can talk about it down at the station.”

“We could, or in my office. It’s on the ground floor. Phil Coulson. Security head.” He holds out his hand and waits for Clint to come to him, stripping off the glove on his right hand to shake with.

“Nah, I think the station is probably better, since we already know you saw Chambers about, hm, six and a half hours ago and he’s been dead for five and a half or so.”

“Maybe a bit more,” Coulson says. “I’m assuming you’re using basal body temp to guess, but Greg would have been, ah, a bit overheated at a quarter to twelve, so that would probably mess with the timeline.”

“You’re really not good at making me think you’re not the guy, you know that?”

Coulson nods. “I’m not the guy, but I don’t believe obfuscation is a good opening strategy.”

“Oh. Kay, great. Well, so I’d rather you and your Glock stayed where I can see you—also, just throwing this out there, the fact that I’m a crime lab guy does not mean I cannot stand in in a fight.”

“I didn’t think it was.” Coulson holds up his hand and points at his callus deliberately, and then pointedly looks at Clint’s hands. “You have one of these and another I feel like is going to make sense when I see the weapon. And you’re a southpaw at that. I wouldn’t pick that fight without a lot more information.”

“Good to know. Still, lead the way. We’re going out front to the squad car.”

“No cuffs?”

“Not til I actually mean to arrest you, no.” Clint shrugs. “I try to only cuff any given person once, you know?”

Coulson gives him a look Clint doesn’t know how to interpret, although he’s just about sure the chill that runs up his spine is because it’s hot, not because he’s afraid. Which is probably 100% wrong given the guy either killed his lover, or just learned his very recent lover died, either of which makes him probably the absolute wrong target for Clint’s libido.

They walk out to the car and Coulson allows Clint to disarm him without incident, then climbs in the back without a fuss. Clint sets the Glock on the front seat with his bag and watches Coulson in the mirror as he calls in to describe the current situation, and then they go.

\--

“Yeah, man, your prints are fuckin’ everywhere,” Bucky is saying to Phil Coulson when Clint gets back to him. He’s been prodding at the images trying to work out what twigged at his brain initially, but so far he’s not seeing it. It’s going to be obvious, and therefore annoying, when it comes to him, but knowing that isn’t actually going to make it happen any faster, so he’s on his way out for a run. Sometimes that helps. That or sleep, but he’s chronically bad at sleeping on a coherent pattern or otherwise at times that are useful.

Bucky has Coulson hooked up to a lie detector (Clint thinks that is just a waste of time; anyone with the capacity to be as calm as Coulson has been all along regarding the bloody demise of the guy he fucked ummmten or so hours ago is either a sociopath in the first place, or is a person who knows how to fool a machine. Or both; both is not out of the question, although Clint feels like it’s probably just the second one). It looks like they’re just winding up, though, and Bucky is starting to pull off the tabs. He looks up at Clint. “Hey.”

“Hey. I’m going for a run after I drop this guy back at his car, prolly swing by Kate’s on the way back. You need anything?”

“From Katie? Hell yes.” Bucky holds up a finger and goes back to peeling stickum off Coulson’s skin. “Hang on, I got a list.”

“Kate’s?” Coulson says. “Kate Bishop? And now your callus makes sense.” He pulls at the remaining tabs himself as Clint tries not to look as interested as he is because operationally-sound leaps of logic make him hot, shut up. “Am I being held, or am I free to go?

“Don’t leave town,” Bucky says, texting Clint his list, “but at this time you are not being held. Despite that every fucking shred of evidence we have is about you, nothing about _you_ is pointing at any of the evidence.”

“So far,” Clint says. Bucky’s maybe a little loose-lipped (not really; he holds a lot of things close but lets people think he’s an open book), but he’s going to stay goddamn professional about this despite that Coulson is now rolling down his shirtsleeves over forearms Clint would like to rub against like a cat.

“Of course,” Coulson says. “Still, I have nothing to hide.”

“Dude, you were fucking a married man in secret, using his burner phone that is probably for nothing but arranging hookups with you. I think you have something to hide.”

“Not really,” Coulson says. “I don’t know whether you’ve talked to Melanie yet, but she knew perfectly well about me. We didn’t tell people _in the office_ , which is why we both usually used separate phones—the company provided the others? I didn’t want them to show up in the case of a subpoena for office materials because it wasn’t relevant to a damn thing. But it wasn’t a secret from her, nor from people in my life.”

Clint picks up keys and motions Coulson to follow. “Come on, I’ll take you back to your car.”

“Don’t you have other stuff to work on?”

“Everything’s processing or otherwise in the hands of experts,” Clint says. “So. Such as?”

“Such as what?”

“People in your life.” He puts Coulson back in the back of the car; he’s still actually a person of interest, after all.

“Oh. Well, I do have a sister, although she and I don’t usually discuss my sex life. By the way, am I still being questioned?”

“Pssh. Anything you say can and will, man, but no, I’m wondering who you can tell us about that might corroborate your story.”

“I see.”

“So, no one on your team, not your sister… Wife?”

“Never had the pleasure. Although, as Greg was more my type physically, my matrimonial options have been limited until recently.”

“Then who?”

“I’ll get you some names and contact information as soon as I’m home.”

“I assume you know better than to be in touch for the purpose of rehearsing a story…”

“Of course.” Coulson agrees. “You’re welcome to follow me back.”

Clint meets his eyes in the mirror, trying to decide if the hint of flirtation he’s getting is just wishful thinking. It has to be, unless the guy is seriously a sociopath and doesn’t give a shit that the person he had his dick in late last night is now dead, and Coulson meets his gaze steadily. “Well, let’s get you to your car first.” He turns onto the parkway and changes the subject.

Probably he doesn’t really _need_ to know about Coulson’s musical taste, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

It’s not until after he’s followed him to his apartment to get a list of four neatly-printed names and numbers that it occurs to him to wonder how Coulson knows Kate, and without knowing that, he doesn’t feel good about asking Kate about him. Although he wants to.

\--

It’s no surprise that Coulson is _all over_ Chambers’ office. There are other samples in the room – a guy named Ward, a recent part-time hire in new customer accounts who was in the room for some kind of orientation on Tuesday and has a great alibi, is particularly present (fibers, prints, even a shoeprint, size ten, next to the window) pretty much everywhere, although when Clint watches the tape of his interview with Maria, he seems like a sexist obnoxious asshole, but probably not a murderous one. Although, that’s often exactly how murderers manage to carry themselves. Still, Clint doesn’t really know what he thinks about him, unless it’s that Ward is a second lover and that’s why he touched everything in Chambers’ space in the last three or four days. Although that seems pretty fast for a new hire, unless the hire came after the fucking, but then probably someone will know, if that’s it? Probably.

Clint also still can’t figure out why the photos are bugging him, so much that he keeps going out for short runs to try and empty his head and see what the problem is. So far: a day and a half, three runs, eleven miles, a full(ish) night’s sleep, no dice. Damn it.

\--

Melanie Chambers is sweet, tiny, and level-headed, and even though her eyes are red from crying she’s calm and willing to speak to them. She quirks her mouth at Bucky’s slightly–awkward attempt to ask her if she knows about Coulson, and asks them in for lemonade. 

Clint hates lemonade, associates it with dust and bad childhood memories, but she holds up a bottle of decent whisky with a raised eyebrow, and what the hell, he’s on duty but he lets her add a little splash. He’s only going to sip at it anyway. It does improve the experience of putting it on his tongue markedly.

“I married Greg fully aware he was always going to want to fuck men,” she says, the word _fuck_ simultaneously shocking and appropriate coming from her mouth. “He’d have refrained from indulging that if I wanted him to, but I am… I _was_ secure in the relationship and not inclined to deny him something he really enjoyed. I _was_ glad when he found someone who didn’t need any more of him than that, honestly; before Phil his other long-term partners wanted… I don’t know. Either they treated him like shit or they wanted more comprehensive relationships, which wasn’t where we were.” She shrugs. “I know it’s not usual, but I have to tell you, he and I didn’t engage in jealousy.”

“So…” Clint pauses, then what the hell, asks anyway. “You also had other partners?”

“Not recently,” she says. “Not in the last, oh, six months or so.”

“And that ended well?”

“He moved to DC,” she says. “I’ll get you his number.” She stands and crosses to a roll-top desk that’s standing open, pulling a spiral-bound address book from one of about thirty cubbies of various sizes. She opens to a page and sets it in front of Clint, letting him copy down the information. 

“But really,” she adds, returning to her seat, “I don’t think he would have had anything to do with this. I was one of at least three women he was casually banging.”

“Which was also okay with you?” Bucky asks. Clint shoots him a look; for all Bucky has been around, he’s sometimes kind of surprisingly old-fashioned.

“I’d be a hypocrite if it hadn’t been,” she says. “And I know, that wasn’t an answer. Yes, it was fine. His role in my life was about his extremely satisfying penis, and I’m sure he’s had no trouble finding someone or some _ones_ to enjoy it in his new life.”

“But Greg—“

“Satisfying in completely other ways,” she says shortly. “I love… loved, but still love, you know? my husband, and I planned to be married to him for a long time. We didn’t have a problem, in bed or regarding anyone else in our bed. Or his office, as the case was. I don’t think he ever brought anyone literally into our bed.”

Bucky looks a little distressed by the entire conversation, but Clint mostly thinks Greg and Melanie are kind of great role models, like, he wants to feel that secure and stuff when he grows up. He double checks, “And you don’t have any kids?”

She presses her lips together. “No one knows, but I’m thirteen weeks pregnant. We weren’t telling anyone until fifteen weeks, because we’ve never gotten that far before.” Her eyes well up at that, where they haven’t anywhere else, and Clint sets his glass (empty, which surprises him a little) down and takes her hand. 

“Hey. We can leave you alone,” he says. “I don’t think we need anything more.”

She shakes her head. “Everything about this is hard, but it’s your job to follow this where it goes. It’s not your fault.” She swallows and pushes away the tears. “What else do you _want_ to know?”

Jesus, Clint ups his estimation of her even further. 

“Do you know Coulson well?” he asks.

“He’s a smartass and competent at everything I’ve ever seen him attempt,” she says. “I expect you’ve probably thought the same if you’ve had the chance to see him do much of anything.”

“Just answer our questions, is all he’s done,” Bucky says. “and probably fool the lie detector just for shits and giggles.”

“He’s not much of a giggler,” Melanie says. “And I don’t doubt he _could_ do that, but I think he’s also unlikely to have been lying.”

Clint takes his glass to the sink, along with Bucky’s, and rinses both. “We’ve kept you long enough,” he says. “Is there, uh, anything you need?”

She shakes her head and walks with them to the door. “Keep me posted,” she says. “I don’t need or want to be coddled.”

Clint nods, and they head to the door, but then he turns back. “If you knew about Coulson, why the second phone?”

Melanie arches a brow at him. “You didn’t ask Coulson that?”

“I did, actually.”

“Ah. Comparing responses then. All right. That was his doing, not ours. Concerns about the appearance of impropriety.”

“And the other numbers on the call history?”

“No idea. He might have been in touch with Jasper, but they ended things a good while ago. Or, they might be anonymous Grindr hookups.” She shrugs. “We hadn’t recently discussed anyone new, but then, we usually didn’t until or unless they became a regular thing, so.”

“No one else in particular comes to mind?”

“No. I assume you’ll check on those call history numbers; I’ll be happy to tell you if I recognize anyone.”

“Right. Well, we’ll leave you to, um,” Bucky scowls, still apparently uncomfortable with the entire situation. “Whatever you were doing before we showed up.”

She grins, a little watery but genuine. “Crying, mostly, with occasional spurts of writing.”

“You’re a writer?”

“No murder mysteries, I swear. More fantastical stuff. Superheroes, that sort of thing. Under Melvin Champion, mostly because of the girls-can’t-superhero contingent.”

Clint nods again, then opens the door. As they drive back to the station, he decides that honestly, if he ever experiences a driving need for a relationship with a woman again, he hopes he finds someone a lot like Melanie. Assuming she doesn’t turn out to be their suspect, but his gut says she’s not, and it’s usually not wrong.

Even if it is currently telling him the guy evidence suggests is not the guy.

\--

The list of numbers on Chambers’s phone isn’t very long, all in all, and only three entries are anything other than local businesses. Local businesses that are primarily spas, bakeries, and … all right, Clint realizes quickly that they’re calls Chambers has been making in order to pamper his pregnant wife. Christ, aside from the whole extramarital affair, about which Clint has no real opinion but which obviously a lot of people would get all bent out of shape about, it looks like Chambers is basically a really great guy.

He wonders how Coulson is doing.

Hey, after all, he might not have been in a _relationship_ -relationship with the guy, but they obviously worked together and presumably liked each other, bloody murder of even people you don’t like can be pretty upsetting if you’re not a sociopath, and Melanie Chambers clearly knows him; ergo, he’s probably at least a little bit of a mess about the whole thing. Maybe it’s time to check in with him and see.

Okay, fine, it’s also an excuse to both see him and further check out his home and/or office.

Clint sends Steve the list of three unknown numbers to work on along with the ones from Coulson’s list before, clicks shut the lid on his laptop and grabs his keys.

\--

Coulson’s apartment is, well, the first word Clint thought of when he saw it the other night is that it’s efficient. Not, like, an “efficiency” apartment, but like, Coulson has everything organized in a manner which allows for maximum directness. Two pairs of shoes (one dress, one running) are on a brown rectangular mat inside the door, under a high table with the dings from keys being set down a thousand times. The lamp on the table lights with a touch, casting a soft yellow light that makes Clint wonder about how often he comes in late and tired, wanting low light and nothing harsh. The front room is two warm beige chairs and a couch, of which the couch and one of the chairs face two sides of a dark, probably cherry, coffee table that holds a somewhat dusty remote; apparently Coulson doesn’t watch the TV (CRT, if relatively recent) in the corner a whole lot. There are four paperbacks, all tidy but clearly showing the spine-cracks of having been repeatedly opened, on the end table between the couch and chair. Two have bookmarks sticking out. 

The other chair is beside the entryway table at the door, and it has small white towels pinned to the arms and a larger one covering the seat. They’re clean and bright, like they’ve been recently laundered or even replaced.

“You sit here when you come in from a run?” Clint guesses.

“Or otherwise grungy or dirty,” Coulson confirms. “The cleaning service suggested the towels.” He’s dressed down, in jeans that do pretty great things for his ass, and a loose t-shirt under a worn heather-blue zip-up hoodie, unzipped and with pushed-up sleeves. His holster is absent, and while Clint hasn’t discounted the possibility he has a knife on him, he seems unarmed and relaxed, if somewhat frayed.

Clint nods, wondering what exactly constitutes ‘grungy’ enough that he routinely dirties the arms and seat of the chair, but for the moment he leaves that alone. “How _are_ you?” he asks.

It comes out like some kind of PTA mom who hasn’t seen Hayley’s mom Patty in eight months, like they’ve known each other a long time and Clint wants to hear _all about_ what he’s been up to, tell him _every_ thing.

Well, okay, he does want to hear all about it, but it still sounds weird to his own ears.

“Fine,” Coulson says. The he pauses. “Exhausted, not sleeping. The usual.”

Clint isn’t sure what to do with that. Is it some kind of cover? Is it Coulson letting him in? He nods and follows Coulson into the kitchen, where there are dishes put away in neat stacks in glass-fronted wood-frame cabinets and a fruit bowl (two apples, a banana, a grapefruit) on the counter. A towel is folded neatly on the oven door, and the only thing that seems less than orderly is a pair of slippers, one of them overturned, on a mat next to a sliding door. Clint glances out at the small deck, wondering if Coulson spends a lot of time out there.

“Can I get you a drink?” Coulson has his hand on a cabinet door, and below it, Clint notices the knife block. Which is missing a knife. Which, assuming it is part of the set that is present, is very likely the knife that hacked up Greg Chambers. Shit.

He purses his lips. “Sure, water is fine,” he says. Coulson nods and gets out a pair of tall glasses, fetching ice cubes from the freezer and filling the glasses from the tap.

“So, have you had any more thoughts about who might have had a problem with your …buddy Greg?” Clint asks.

“Buddy seems like a strangely-chosen word,” Coulson says.

“Melanie said you were casual—“

“We were. I’m terrible at relationships, but that doesn’t mean Greg and I weren’t close,” Coulson explains. “I’m not dealing with what she is – he was my friend, but not my partner in the way… I have thought, in my life, that I’d like a partner, but that’s never been what happened? But what I meant was, I feel like you’re trying to feel something out. Just ask.”

“That really isn’t generally how this works.”

“Worst case, I lie to you, and eventually you catch me and charge me with obstruction.”

“Also not how—all right, so how long have you lived here?”

“That’s not what you want to know. Two years this summer; before that I was in a bigger place that was more than I needed and further from the office.”

“And you run?”

“Most mornings. Shoes by the door. Usually take the path that crosses the river at Delmont, loop around the stadium, come back by way of Wild Acres.”

“But you weren’t up to run the other morning.”

“No, I was up, ish, but noodling over coffee and a crossword. Which, in case you wonder, is not my usual morning routine before or after a run, but I’d been out late, as you know, and sometimes mornings after, I… like the particular kind of domestic feeling it brings.”

“Getting laid makes you want to do a crossword puzzle?”

Coulson sighs. “Yes, but not right in the moment. That would probably be a little much.”

“So how long has your knife been missing?” Clint points at the block.

“Two and a half months, give or take. I had some people over after we finally sold off the Weymore account, and the next morning there was an issue in the Chicago office followed almost immediately by one in Tucson, so I didn’t notice its absence until after I was back; it’s possible the cleaning service mislaid it, or a guest did, or it went out with the trash. Between about nine and eleven weeks ago. I assume that’s your murder weapon? I did not, because it seemed trivial, report it missing.”

“And again with you not making me think you’re not the guy.”

“I’m not.” Coulson takes Clint’s glass and his own to the sink, then stands for a minute, hip against the counter, feet crossed at the ankle. “I’m probably going to wind up regretting this, but I feel like at some point you’re going to find the knife with, inexplicably, Greg’s blood and my fingerprints, so I’d rather have cooperated. Look around. Knock yourself out. I can wait here or you can call someone to babysit me.”

Clint scowls, but calls Natasha from SWAT—she looks helpless but could probably take out even Coulson, whom Clint is _not_ underestimating, with a cookie and a carrot peeler. Also, she speaks a lot of languages and is obscenely good at making complex assessments from basic body language that even Clint doesn’t always realize is going on. As soon as she shows up, he starts on the bedroom.

An hour later, as they’re leaving, she gives him a side-eye that says she sees how much he’s just fucking _attracted_ to Coulson, but she also shrugs when he asks if she picked up anything useful, and says if he’s the guy, he’s really good. Which Clint knew already, so.

\--

“You got any more from the prints?” Clint asks, coming up behind Steve, still far enough away not to startle him. No one likes when Steve is startled; sometimes he starts to wheeze and it makes him mad and then he’s in full wet hen mode for a week.

“Well, yes and no,” Steve says. “Yes, I still have part of a print I can’t match. If we had a print database from Chambers’ company, we might have it, but apparently they don’t keep that kind of data. I also have some prints that match the guy you guys brought in, who by the way I do not think did anything so it’s not making me happy to have evidence against him, but they’re not quite right anyway. They seem very faint, like prints that someone might leave by _just_ touching, not holding, a knife, you know? Or like, picking it up, but not using it to stab someone.” This isn’t really new information to Clint, although he hasn’t really talked it over with Steve. He’s been dicking around with scraps of evidence for over a week, and so far, nothing is giving them a very solid clue other than Coulson – and still, even Bruce agrees with Clint’s gut, and they haven’t brought Coulson in. It all matches, but something is just wrong about the whole thing, and there’s no great reason not to take their time

“None of the kind of grip change and movement—“

“Exactly. The partial I can’t match seems more like one that came from actual use, but it’s really just an edge? And the ones that match the guy, one of em’s right there in the blood.”

Clint scowls. “That’s not very promising.”

“No, I know. But that’s what I got. I’m still running scans, though. I have some foreign blood down in the cracks of the hilt, not Chambers and also not your guy.”

“Name’s Coulson.”

“Huh?”

“The guy, name’s Coulson. He’s not, like, _mine_.”

“Oh, sure. Anyway, I’ll text if I get anything compelling, obviously, but right now I think my gut says the same as yours, but I also can’t prove it. Hey, if you see Buck can you see if he wants to go to trivia tonight? I was thinking about tagging along if he is.”

Clint laughs. “He never _wants_ to go to trivia, Steve. He only goes if you are.”

“Really?” Steve flushes red. “Okay, well can you see anyway?”

Clint chuckles a little more and then, because apparently working in the crime lab is exactly like the weeks leading up to prom in the ninth grade, agrees.

\--

“Bad news,” Bucky says four hours later, sauntering in with a trash bag in his flesh hand. “Think these are the clothes. Shoes and everything. Spatter and general grossness intact.”

“And?” Clint raises an eyebrow. He’s back to glaring at his crime scene photos. Something, _something_ … 

“And they’re your guy’s clothes, only a couple of prints on the tongue that we found on a first look, but found in dumpsters a couple blocks from his place in the Wild Acres complex. We lucked out, actually – they only collect every two weeks, and tomorrow’s collection day. But I think I heard you say he runs— “

“Yeah, shit. Okay, so run DNA and stuff, just to be sure, but…” He pauses as Bucky pulls a set of towels, two small and one large, out of the bag (Crap. The chair towels?) and then a pair of shoes a few scuff marks (and several blood smears) less pristine than those he’s seen Coulson wear. “You know what, also look for fingerprints inside the shoe, okay? Like, on the bottom where the ball of the foot goes?”

“What? Who— “

“Because I think I just realized what’s wrong with the crime scene, and maybe there won’t be prints but maybe there will be something.” He grabs his laptop and heads down to Stark’s office for a chat.

\--

It’s a tense couple of hours with Stark while Clint proves his theory. Bucky comes through with something in the shoe bed; it’s not prints, exactly, but there’s trace powder in the shape of fingers and palms anyway, powder from latex gloves. All right, so progress.

It’s a big hand, long-fingered and obviously cramped into the toe of the shoe, and Clint’s glad that this does effectively rule out Melanie – not that they were looking at her, but still, it’s good to have evidence. Once they finish processing the clothes, that’s another problem: Coulson’s DNA exists on the clothes. But then, confusingly, it’s not there in particularly convincing amounts (did he change into the clothes for fifteen minutes to murder someone and then right back out?), and, critically, the semen smears on the shorts – probably pulled from the found condom? – are adulterated and weird. It’s not lube, which was the obvious option; it takes a while before they work out the additional substance is spoiled mayonnaise.

Which is consistent with the office trash can; Greg had had half a leftover sandwich in the trash when they arrived. Sloppy, mister criminal, Clint thinks. 

That’s weird in and of itself; it seems like the crime was pretty well planned by someone who worked out a way to get everything he needed (Clint feels good about the ‘he’, here, given the hand size, although he’s not calling it 100% yet) without Coulson noticing. Clint feels like he’s the kind of guy who notices things, so… it’s weird, is all.

But still, the evidence points at no one else, and that’s a problem. Another point for the competence of their killer is that there’s apparently nothing of him left at the scene, or on any of the clothes. That’s why Clint stays in Stark’s lab to keep the guy on track. He’s a genius, but he’s also sort of distressingly likely to lose focus when something shiny comes into his field of view. He’s pretty motivated on this one; falsified evidence annoys him and he feels, in his words, very negatively toward douchebags who don’t even have the balls to just leave it a mystery. He seems to think framing someone in particular for a murder is worse than just the murder, and while Clint is pretty sure that’s a minor factor for him, still, he’s a little inclined to agree. Probably because the frame-ee is Coulson.

It’s just as well he’s there, though; Stark needs someone besides himself to provide a second reference sample of how shoeprints go wonky on middle-aged carpet when someone walks the shoes with hands in them, probably from the side and with a fair amount of pressure to make them convincing. Clint’s sure that’s what’s been tugging his eyeballs since the first glance at the scene: the shoeprints are just a little shallow on the left side, consistently, and sure, that’s a possible pattern for a regular human, but it’s not how Coulson walks and with the handprints, well.

So now they know how, and Stark’s models say it’s really damn unlikely, both for hand size and for pressure exerted, for Coulson to have framed himself. Which leaves them still with only negative evidence – a reason to believe Coulson is innocent, but no one to take his place at the top of the list. 

Damn it.

Clint leaves around seven with a clear idea of certain physical traits he’s looking for, and a frustrating lack of name to go with them. “Big hands” is not particularly a feature listed in the DMV database, and even there, weight is self-reported and not particularly accurate.

He sighs and goes to ask Coulson why his clothes have Chambers’ blood on them.

\--

“Clint!” Coulson says, opening the door with a towel in his hands. He’s wearing worn jeans and a Henley with the sleeves pushed up, ragged sneakers on his feet, thick-framed glasses on his nose, and Clint has to remind himself _person of interest in criminal matter, do not lick._ He does manage to pay attention when he speaks, anyway. “I haven’t thought of anything new, but—“

“No, I figured you were probably pretty thorough in the first place.” Clint steps into the living room as Coulson waves him toward the kitchen. “We found more evidence, though.”

“Oh?” He’s drying the supper dishes and putting them away; Clint notes that the armchair’s towel coverings look a little ragged now; they’ve been used to wipe hands and blot mud a couple of times. He stays in the doorway to talk.

“Are you able to explain how someone would have clothes which are clearly yours, which you haven’t mentioned were missing?”

Coulson half-turns to him and blinks. “I’m not missing any… well. I’m not _missing_ anything, but I _did_ drop off a couple of things at the Goodwill about, hm. Three weeks ago? I didn’t drop them off personally. I left them boxed up for the cleaning service to take over.”

“…Who’s the cleaning service?” Clint asks. “And, specifically, what was included in the box?”

“Odds and ends,” Coulson says, answering the second question first. “A couple of pairs of jeans, a jacket, a suit that was still in pretty good shape. Handful of t-shirts. Shoes.”

“Shoes like you were wearing the other day?”

“Like those,” Coulson says, pointing at the mat where his slippers are no longer overturned.

“Underwear?”

“No, I usually don’t think people want to wear someone else’s used underwear.”

“So where might those have come from?”

Coulson blinks again. “You know, I don’t actually keep a particularly close count of underwear. I tend to wear them until they tear or get sliced off me – not, before you ask, because I am into sex with knives. I just have, in my life, occasionally gotten into a fight where a knife and my abdomen came way too close for comfort.”

“So, out of your laundry, then.”

“Maybe.” Coulson’s mouth turns down unhappily at the corners. “If you’re telling me that my dirty underwear and clothes I can’t account for were found, then I have to assume my cleaning service is involved.”

“Or someone pretending to be with them, yes. Who?”

“SHIELD. Catchy and slightly ridiculous acronym. Simple Household Interior/Exterior, Linen, and Delivery services.”

“I’ve heard of them before. They’re reputable—“

“Yes, or I wouldn’t have contracted with them.” Coulson scowls. “They’re a big company, so I imagine running down who all might ever have had access to my things will take some time.”

“Ah, but they’ll have had access in the right time frame for both the knife and the clothes,” Clint points out. 

Coulson shakes his head. “Shit. All right, that is _better_ , but now I’m having another terrible thought.”

“What’s that?”

“If there’s a sociopath working for the largest cleaning service in the city, am I the only one to look good for a crime he didn’t commit?”

“Hold up,” Clint says, a little uncomfortable with the extent to which he’s allowed Coulson onto the team here. “Just because I want to believe that’s actually where we are, we still don’t have a real clear picture.”

“You have enough of one to come back and ask me this shit,” Coulson says. 

“I know, but it’s important to me to keep in my head that I _do not_ have another suspect at this time.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why? Do you usually have trouble with keeping that in mind?”

Clint narrows his eyes at the guy. “I’m a hundred percent sure I am not the questionee here.”

Coulson laughs. “True. Occupational hazard. Just because my security work usually more entails corporate espionage doesn’t mean I don’t nose around. But just, the way you said it, it was like you were arguing against yourself.”

“I am. I don’t want you to be the guy. And yet, lacking a specific other suspect I can’t entirely rule you out.”

“Fair enough.” Coulson takes the towel he’d set down on the table while they talked and drapes it over the oven door’s handle, then opens his mouth to say something else just as his phone rings. He holds up a finger for Clint to wait, and thumbs across the screen. “Melanie?”

He listens for a couple of seconds, then takes the phone from his ear and hits the speaker button. Clint isn’t sure what to do with that, but then he quickly doesn’t care; Melanie is clearly upset, and from what she’s saying, she has a reason. There’s a masked man outside her home, crouched down and doing _some_ thing in the flower bed under the back window. “I’m sorry to call you, Phil, with everything that, well. You know. But you’re the one that installed the security system.”

“That’s true,” Coulson says. “Did you call 911?”

She makes a sound which is sort of a strangled chuckle/sob. “I don’t think he’ll get in, although I will if it seems like that changes. But what are the odds Greg dies under, you know, the circumstance, and then…”

Clint waves his hands and mouths, _tell her to call NOW._

Coulson raises his eyebrows.

Clint shrugs. _Alibi._ He points.

“Mel, go ahead and call them now,” Coulson says. “But do you want me to come over there?”

“Do you think you should?”

Coulson glances at Clint, then smiles in a way that sends a shiver down Clint’s spine. “Yes, yes I do. Call 911, and I’ll be there soon.” They end the call, and he looks at Clint. “So, I _have_ an alibi, unless you don’t count.”

“Yeah, but I already don’t want you to be the guy.”

“I see. Well, I assume I should not arrive there before the police…”

Clint’s phone rings in his pocket and he fishes it out. “Hey Buck.”

_Melanie Chambers—_

“Yeah, I know. She called Coulson for help. I’m here with him. We’re about to go over there.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“That’s exactly what she said when he offered. But, among other things, Coulson might recognize the guy…”

“But it’ll mean he’s on site.”

“Yeah, but with me, and I mean, he’s with me now.”

“True. Still, if it was a conspiracy or whatever…”

“Yeah, okay, I hear you, but still. Meet you there.”

It’s not a particularly long drive, but it feels awkward to Clint, who can’t help that he wants to tell Coulson everything. It’s not _just_ that the urge to lick isn’t actually receding (which, he reminds himself, would be wildly inappropriate _while driving_ regardless of anything else that might be going on), but that he feels like he can just _trust_ the guy. It’s not a feeling he really gets on the job, and to be honest it’s kind of freaking him out.

By the time they pull up in front of the Chambers household, he’s maybe worked himself into something not that far from a panic about it. Still, he is a grown-up and a professional, so he tells both his lizard brain and its squirrel counterpart to stow it, and they get out of the car. 

Two seconds later, Clint sees movement out of the corner of his eye — across the street, but he takes just an instant to regret the fact that by leaving Coulson out of the car and alone while he chases the guy, he’s fucking up that alibi, and then he drops his camera bag and he’s after him. There’s not a great reason that he’s absolutely positive this is the guy – he could be anyone, right? Random dude out for a walk and spooked by cops? Peeping tom unrelated to the current situation? Who knows. Still, he’s sure, and since he gives up about five inches in height to this guy, by his very quick, in motion, running hard estimate, he’s glad for the fact this morning’s run was a light one because he’s going to need a lot of speed to make up for stride.

He catches up to him three blocks away, largely because he has to break his rhythm to avoid a California-stopping jackass on a cross street (thank you California-stopping jackass, the rest of the time don’t do that please, Clint thinks in the driver’s direction), and tackles him onto a pile of gravel in front of a gray house that is obviously in the middle of some serious landscaping work. The asshole scrabbles on the ground and throws a handful of sandy rock into his eyes, but this is not Clint’s first rodeo and he hangs on anyway, squeezing them shut tight against what feels like probably the imminent destruction of both corneas. Not like he needs his eyes for his living or anything. There’s one more violent scrabble, with Clint hanging on tight and the other guy taking the opportunity to grind his face down into the gravel before Clint manages to get a leg around him and toss an elbow hard enough for a momentary advantage and pin.

It feels like about an hour, but it’s actually about 30 seconds for backup to arrive, but the backup is Coulson. Who shows up with the camera (not in the bag, what.) and some handcuffs in his pocket 

“Why do you have…”

“Force of habit, I guess,” Coulson says. He clips them around the struggling guy’s ankles (okay, not the typical use, but effective to prevent running) and then moves Clint out of the way and plunks down, probably a little harder than absolutely necessary, on the guy’s chest, forcing the air out of him with a whoosh and not letting up. 

Clint plants one foot hard on the guy’s nearer wrist, just in case, and takes a moment to try and blink as much out of his eyes as he can, then fishes out his own cuffs and snaps it around, motioning Coulson off and rolling the wheezing guy onto his belly to grab the other one. He’s not that sorry the gravel is dusty and is no help in letting him catch his breath.

“I took a couple shots of him as you chased, just in case you didn’t get him,” Coulson says, handing Clint the camera and dragging off the mask. “Also, this is Grant Ward. He’s an estimator for SHIELD and has been in my place twice that I know of and apparently at least once that I don’t.”

Clint arches a brow at the guy. “We’ve almost met,” he says with irritation. “I watched the tape, but didn’t do the interview. I guess your buddy Garrett might not have been entirely truthful in his enthusiastic commentary on your camping trip. Coulson, you know he works part time in the new accounts?”

Coulson narrows his eyes. “I don’t, and I should.” He gets up and pulls the guy upright. “Asshole, how’d you get hired without a file crossing my desk?” Ward grins broadly and says nothing.

\--

“So basically, you caught the guy red-handed?” Steve shakes his head when Clint nods. “The quality of criminals is really falling,” he complains. “Not that I want any of these assholes to get away with their bullshit, but come _on_ , he just showed up, broad daylight, and tried to fuck with a _known party_ that we were definitely aware of and talking to? Like, what kind of dumbass…”

Clint shrugs. “Not complaining. We’d have gotten him eventually because he left trace inside Coulson’s _shoes_ what the hell, but this was easier, and I got the satisfaction of grinding him around in the gravel a little for our trouble, so.”

“Trace inside someone else’s shoes. What, did he wear them barefoot and leave DNA?” He shuffles through the file, frowning when he doesn’t find a DNA report to match.

“Nope. Latex powder from gloves, clear handprint, definitely not Coulson’s hand. We also got a partial print on the knife, and while it wouldn’t have been enough for a general database match, once we had a pretty good idea of hand size and likely employer…”

“So, this douchebarrel planned a whole crime to frame your guy there, and then figured we’d never notice mayonnaise, handprints, and random-ass print problems? Do you think he just thinks _we_ suck, or was it all him? Ugh, I swear, I was a happier man when crime was simple smash and grab and no one ever went to this much trouble to completely fuck up.”

Clint chuckles at Steve’s indignation at the incompetence that had gotten in the way of an otherwise fairly clever crime, and leaves him to his work finishing the lab report. He has a stop to make in the evidence room with the film Coulson had shot, and then he’s going to (reluctantly) go get his eyes looked at. They feel like hell, and he does kind of need them, in general.

\--

“Hello?”

“Uh, Coulson?”

There’s a pause, and then Coulson says, “You’re calling me from your own phone this time, I assume.” Which is true; he’s previously always called from his PD-issued cell, but this is his own, the number Kate has for when they catch up over pizza.

“Yeah, hey, so I don’t really know why I called you.”

“Witty repartee?”

“Okay, yes that. No, I need a ride, and probably I should call Kate or one of the guys from the lab, but somehow when I decided what number to tell my phone to call, I said yours instead.”

“Maybe you just wanted to make sure I had your number? Why do you need a ride?”

“Because apparently scratched corneas mean resting eyeballs and they won’t let me drive myself home.”

“So, you wanted me to have your number and take you home.”

“Well that doesn’t sound like I’m hitting on you at _all_.”

“Oh, it does, but first let’s deal with the eyeball problem. Where are you?”

Clint feels a little silly, now that he’s actually asking his not-a-suspect to come get him, but he answers the question. He hears the roar of an engine in the middle of the sentence, then Coulson says, “Be right there.”

It’s a short wait, during which Clint continues to feel silly, but with his eyes bandaged, mostly what he feels is a little panicky.

“I don’t think you could drive yourself anyway,” Coulson says. Which is true; Clint’s eyes are covered and sore.

“No, not like this, but I mean, I could take off the bandages, right?”

“And risk further damage? That seems like a lousy idea.” Coulson steps closer and brushes the back of his knuckles on the back of Clint’s hand. “Come on. My car’s in the structure.”

Clint recoils from the idea of being helped, but then, it _is_ an excuse to touch, which Clint wants maybe a little too much. Still. “I can make it,” he says, standing and throwing off Coulson’s light grasp of his forearm.

“Oh, sure. I’ll get you a wheelchair…”

“NO.” Clint would rather bump into thirty walls than tolerate a chair.

“Well, it’s that or let me help you,” Coulson says. Clint believes him, and sighs dramatically. 

“Fine.” He grips Coulson’s arm the way he’d been gripping his, and lets himself be led.

Ten minutes into the drive home it occurs to him he hasn’t told Coulson where they’re going and also that they’re going north. “Hey, so—“

“While I’m interested in knowing where you live,” Coulson says, “you’re in no condition to take care of yourself. We’re going to my place.”

“What if I still think you might be a creepy murderer?” He doesn’t; in fact, he’s also following up on the notion that maybe Ward had previous setups under his belt (it’s looking possible but unlikely; it seems his motivation is some kind of super twisted sense of punishing people whose moral choices he finds weird? But it’s probably not a coincidence that he seems to be Melanie Chambers’ biggest fan).

“Well, then I guess you’re fucked,” Coulson says.

“Okay, so that would be a pretty great outcome,” Clint snarks before he can think better of it, but like, it’s true; he’s been thinking about it for weeks, except that Coulson just lost his previous partner in a pretty grisly way and it’s probably tacky to horn in?

“Maybe after your eyes heal,” Coulson says.

Clint resists the urge to squirm in his seat and tries to work out whether he should insist on being taken home. But really, there’s nothing he actually needs from home immediately, so does it matter? Probably no.

\--

“You can probably smell I have soup on the stove,” Coulson says as he guides Clint to his front door, “but that’s pretty hard to eat when you can’t see it so I’ll see what else is in the freezer.”

“Hey, no. Don’t you go to actual trouble for me,” Clint says, scowling (okay, scowling briefly because it kind of hurts to crinkle up his face, which has like thirty tiny-to-medium abrasions from his gravel-wrestling experience earlier). 

“Well, unless you want me to feed you—which I will tell you now I would probably be very bad at—I think we’ll have to. Pizza?”

Clint shrugs, a little torn because hey, he didn’t want help getting out of the hospital, sure, but being hand-fed appeals to him in a way he should probably examine a little bit, later, but pizza is always a hit. “Pepperoni?”

“What if I usually get more like squash and spinach?”

“Ugh, no, take me home!”

“Fine, we’ll get one of each.”

“Coulson, you were eating soup. Why do you even need two pizzas?”

“You can probably call me Phil, and shush, soup keeps great.”

“Yeah, okay, Phil, but I’m paying.”

Clint feels the shrug in the arm still leading him, depositing him at a kitchen chair, but Coulson doesn’t answer, and a minute later he’s on the phone, ordering “my usual, and also throw in a large pepperoni and hey Clint, you want garlic butter sauce?”

“Instead of red?”

“No, for dipping.”

“Oh. Yes? Where do you even order from that has garlic butter and squash and god knows what else?”

Coulson just tells them they want a couple of sauces and to put it on his tab, which _hey_ that is not Clint paying.

“You can pay next time,” Coulson says. 

Clint is kind of super okay with the prospect of a next time.

\--

“Yeah?” It turns out it’s harder than expected to answer the phone with bandaged eyes, which makes zero sense because come on, he answers at three in the morning kind of oftenish? And then it’s in the dark and the bright light is just eyeball-killing anyway and so then he keeps his eyes shut so how is this even different? How? But man, the fumbling here, and he wasn’t even actually asleep. More just snoozing a little on Coulson’s couch with dirty plates on the coffee table and leftover pizza in the fridge. Which is maybe not the sexiest end of a first date that isn’t a date so much as a bringing home from the ER? But Coulson’s hand is draped over his arm and chest, and he kind of thinks napping with his head on Coulson’s thigh is a thing he could do again.

It’s Steve on the phone, letting him know they got back from trace from the shoes.

He nods, which it turns out is kind of a dizzy feeling right at this time, and tells him thanks. It’s not anything he actually needed to know; as far as he’s concerned they have Ward dead to rights and the whole gravel twister game is all the proof Clint needs that the dude is a grade-A dickbag, but it’s still good of Steve to follow up, let him know everything is solid.

Ten seconds later Bucky calls.

“Hey, man. Stevie called to tell me about the prints—“

“Yes, well, I thought you might wonder why our criminal mastermind was going after the wife.”

“Okay…” Clint squirms his way upright. “You know I’m, like, on medical leave at the moment, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Still, since it’s kind of about you…”

“Wait, what?”

“He saw you and Coulson together I guess at Coulson’s place? and somehow thought you were Chambers. You do kind of look alike. He thought he’d somehow survived, so he was trying again with less time to gather up props and put them in place in a way that would look quite the same, although apparently he was going to go get Coulson and bring him to the scene somehow, or, I don't know, something. Once he killed the miraculously-still-living Greg Chambers.”

“He thought… okay, that’s not how a sane person interacts with the world. Even if he’d somehow, and I don’t know how the fuck this would have been a thing, but even if we’d gotten there in thirty seconds with a couple gallons of blood and four surgeons in the bus, he’d still be recovering. And also the newspaper would not have run an obituary. Jesus.”

“No accounting for the kind of unhinged mind that gets mad at someone for really no good reason, then decides to frame him for the murder of a lover.”

“So, this was always about framing Coulson, not about killing—“ Clint feels the tension in Coulson’s body next to him and turns toward him a little, shrugs.

“Yep. There was something about his childhood, a brother, a dog, some kind of stepfather drama about infidelity, I don’t really know.”

“Fuck that. My childhood is the long-running and hard to defeat champion of fuckery around here, and I don’t go around framing people for murder. Still, that might mean there actually are others. Frame jobs, I mean.”

“We have a team poking through a LOT of recent cases, believe me. Anyway, you rest. I just wanted to bring you up to speed since you were actually relevant to the case. Hey, you need anyone to bring you soup or whatever?”

“Uh. No. I have all my care and feeding needs handled for the moment.” 

Coulson quickly snags the phone out of Clint’s hand (no fair! Blind!) and puts it to his ear. “Hi, who’s this?”

“It’s Bucky,” Clint says, probably at the time as Bucky does.

“Well, we have pizza here now, and my nefarious plans mostly involve making him rest. Yes, I realize. I hope not. I’ll let you know. Thanks for checking.” Coulson ends the call and leans forward to set the phone on the table. “Still hungry?”

“Not really.” Clint says. “What are the rest of your nefarious plans?”

“Not for today,” Coulson says.

“Tomorrow?”

“We’ll see if shaking your head still makes you dizzy.”

“If not?”

“Then we can talk.” 

Clint gets the feeling Coulson isn’t going to tell him much else, so he purses his lips. “Hey, so, did Buck mention why he called?”

“To worry you about the case, sounded like.”

“Nah. To tell me he went after Melanie because when he saw me and you together he thought I was him.”

“You do look superficially like him.”

“That’s what some of the guys said at the time. I didn’t really see it.”

“I did. It caused me a little distress, the first time we met – here we were looking at the scene of bloody demise of my very recent…”

“Booty call?”

“Well, maybe, although I usually wouldn’t use that term.”

“I’m shocked.”

“But there we were, and I was busy thinking about the hot guy in the room. It felt a little wrong.”

“Oh, a little, huh?” Clint sighs. “Well, so was I, but you were a suspect, so like, also wrong.”

Coulson chuckles. “Fine, so we’re both a little wrong here. Still, it could be my nefarious plans are related.”

“Cool.” Clint flops back against the back of the couch. “But I’d really like to have seen your face while you were saying that.”

“It’s probably blushing.”

“Being bandaged up is boring.”

“I can imagine. I could read you the paper?”

“Or a book?” Clint jerks a thumb toward the stack he assumes is still on the end table. “You can explain what’s going on if you’re in the middle.”

He can hear the smile in Coulson’s voice as he says, “Sure.”

\--

“How’s your head?”

Clint’s _head_ is fine, but the rest of him is deeply confused about waking up in a bed that smells like another guy, alone, without having stayed the night post-sexytimes. Part of him knows this is because he’s injured, but it’s dark and…

“Fine?” He’s on his back, so he sits up quickly in one motion, which doesn’t make him dizzy or anything although he’s certainly good and sore kind of all over. Not sore enough to stay down, though. “Still fine. I think I’m basically all better, doc.”

“And yet, you still get to keep the bandages until tomorrow,” says the … says Coulson. He called Coulson. He’s standing by the bed, because, oh right, there are bandages. Yes. Gravel, eyeballs, gouging, right. Wait.

“How did I get in this bed?” Clint asks. There are definitely sheets and pillows, and also he’s pretty sure he’s facing south and Coulson’s couch runs east-west, more or less, so he’s definitely not still on the couch.

“They gave you a painkiller. I finally persuaded you to take it after a couple of chapters. You fell asleep. I moved you with marginal assistance from you in a pretty dopey state.”

“You also strip me?”

“I took off your shoes and your shirt, yes, mostly because you were going to and I didn’t want you trying to pull the shirt over the bandages. You squirmed your jeans off yourself.”

It’s not really that Clint was worried about being disrobed by him, but it’s a little weird to be in someone’s home and not remember getting undressed. Still, now that Coulson explains the chain of events, he has a vague recollection of stumbling in here, of wrestling with his jeans… “Did I proposition you?”

“Just a little. I told you I thought probably that should wait until you could see, and maybe also until everything about the case was wrapped up.”

“Good call.”

“I thought so. Your clothes are on the chair – I could help you, or just hand them to you.”

“I think I can handle it. I should probably go home and get something else to wear anyway.”

“Probably. You said you felt okay, so: more painkillers?”

Clint puts his arms through the sleeves of his shirt and takes a minute to work out getting it over his head without tugging anything loose. “Nah. I’m sore, and I guess maybe if I need to them to sleep tonight? But otherwise it’s just my eyes and face and stuff.” 

“Hey, I _like_ your eyes and face and stuff.”

“See, now I feel like I should do more propositioning.”

“Things that were true last night are still true.”

Clint sighs. “Yeah, I know. Hey, it feels like it’s lunchtime?”

“It is. I still have soup, but—“

“Hey, no. I don’t want to put you out again. I can eat soup. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

He can basically feel Coulson looking doubtful, but he sets his jaw and swings his feet out of bed to start getting his legs in his jeans. Coulson puts them in his hands facing the right way, and steps away from the bed. “All right. I’m sure I have a towel that can serve as a full-body bib.”

Clint flips him off, and Coulson chuckles. 

\--

It’s been a long four months, but Ward’s trial should wrap up today. There’s really no reason they needed to wait for the actual guilty verdict; everyone’s sure it’s him and even though he didn’t actually specifically confess, his story is so full of holes and deeply-flawed “logic” it should be a slam-dunk. Still, Clint kind of appreciates that Coulson – Phil, now – is even worried about making it clear nothing that happens between them is any kind of weird attempt to influence the outcome.

(Of course, that they’ve had lunch and dinner together about nine dozen times, and Clint has slept (alone) in Phil’s bed, and Phil came with him to finally get some non-secondhand furniture (what the hell does Clint know about buying furniture?), and Clint has met Phil’s nieces and maybe they went to Kate’s twice so Clint could show off his mad skills and Phil could demonstrate some pretty epic martial arts moves in the adjacent studio… yeah, he’s super compromised anyway and everyone at the lab would absolutely know it. Still, it’s sweet.)

But if there is any justice in the universe, that jury had better goddamn come back quickly; Clint is basically dying of needing to take things past sandwiches and upholstery.

As it happens, it takes them only fifty-four minutes to come back, and they’re unanimous. Melanie Chambers, who is now enormously pregnant and entirely uncomfortable, hugs Clint, Bucky, Steve, and Phil, and Phil Coulson is no longer in any way a possible suspect in Chambers’ murder, because they got their guy.

Clint drags Phil into an actual custodial closet before they ever leave the courthouse to back him up against a set of shelves and kiss the hell out of him. His glasses get in the way and go all askew – glasses are a pain and he hates Ward forever for making his eyes mad – but it’s still awesome.

“Your place or mine?” he asks, pulling back finally. Phil looks mussed and flushed, lips swollen and pupils wide, and Clint figures he probably looks equally disheveled with Phil’s hands up his shirt and what he’s sure is an epic bulge in his pants.

“Yours is closer,” Phil says. 

“You think?”

“I checked. Google maps says 12 minutes to you, 14 to me this time of day.”

Clint stares for a second, then drops his head forward onto Phil’s shoulder laughing. “You checked for time of _day_?” he says, lips against Phil’s collar.

Phil gives a little shudder and leans into Clint’s face, but his voice is calm. “Well, yes. Traffic is relevant! At noon, your place is _three_ minutes closer. If we stay here another couple hours, mine probably is.”

“Yeah, well as much fun as I am having in this closet, and I have no complaints believe me, I don’t think I want to wait it out in here just so we can have a good excuse to choose your bigger bed.” Clint steps back and holds out a hand. “Come on.” He quickly and crappily retucks his shirt, then sticks his head out in to the hall, which is mostly empty now, and leads Phil to his car. “Please tell me you will not need your car tonight,” he says.

“Probably not,” Phil agrees.

“Awesome.” Clint drops into the driver’s seat and starts the engine, then leans over for another kiss.

Twelve minutes is way too long to wait at this point. Clint swears at every red light and makes faces at pedestrians pushing crosswalk buttons, but Phil reaches over and squeezes his knee, which is very distracting, and after a million years, they get to Clint’s front door. He fumbles with the key for a second because apparently he can’t look the least bit smooth in this moment, then shoves the door open and pulls Phil in behind him. 

Phil yanks the tails of his shirt back out and pushes his hands back in against Clint’s skin before the door is even closed, crowding him past the hall table and toeing off shoes as he walks. It’s deeply efficient – undressing them both and moving toward the bed all in one complicated set of moves – and Clint grins into a kiss. “You’re focused,” he says, biting at Phil’s ear.

“Focused, determined, desperate…” Phil somehow has his shirt undone (when. how.) and is working on Clint’s buckle already, so Clint gets a little focused, too. He drops to his knees to specifically focus on Phil’s belt, nuzzling with his nose while his hands work over his head. 

Phil makes a noise and gets his hands in Clint’s hair for a minute, then goes back to undressing, his tie, then his shirt, then the t-shirt under all dropping to the floor around them as Clint gets his pants undone and works his way in. Phil’s waistband is around his thighs and his boxers are still mostly around his ass when Clint gets his mouth on his dick, and then he puts his hands back in Clint’s hair more firmly. 

Clint takes this permission to go to town, and he takes as much as he can in his mouth in one move. His glasses fog in a second so he takes them off, tossing them to land on the coffee table, then goes back to the very important work of squeezing Phil’s ass.

Phil pushes forward into Clint’s mouth hard – almost too hard, and Clint’s eyes tear up but he doesn’t at all want this to stop so he keeps squeezing and sucking until he realized Phil’s hands have moved again, pushing his shirt off his shoulders. “You should come back up here,” he says. 

Clint pulls off and looks up. “Why?” Like, this is honestly a question; he’s pretty happy with where he is.

“Because I want you naked.”

Clint wants that too, but in a minute. He takes Phil’s cock in again, swallowing around the head until Phil’s knees buckle and he starts to slide down the wall. He could stop, obviously, but he doesn’t, letting himself sit all the way to the floor with his pants around his ankles and Clint between his upraised knees, ass in the air and head down working Phil’s balls. 

“Get undressed,” Phil says. 

Clint sits up onto his knees and ditches his shirt quickly, yanking his t-shirt over his head and hearing it tear.

Phil’s fishing in a pocket as he kicks off his pants and boxers, and in a second he has a condom between his fingers. He tears it open as Clint stands up just long enough to get rid of the pants he wants gone _yesterday_ , and then somehow he shifts them around as he rolls it on, Phil on his back on the tile of Clint’s entryway, Clint straddling his hips.

Clint really wants to need zero seconds of prep to get that in him right the fuck now, but the one tiny corner of his brain that would like to be occasionally a responsible adult says that will mean he’s too uncomfortable tomorrow to do it again, so he says, “Hang on, I have—“

Phil holds up a little packet of lube, and beckons with a finger.

Clint is on his knees again in an instant, hitting the floor hard (he doesn’t care) and on all fours with his tongue in Phil’s mouth while Phil reaches between his legs and opens him up. He’s hard as hell, dicktip brushing Phil’s belly, and he wants to rut there, but more than that he wants to rut there with Phil _in_ him, so he whimpers at the way Phil’s arm-hair and the slick side of the condom are just brushing against his shaft, and lets Phil prep him for just a minute.

Then, he raises up off his hands, lines up, and sinks down hard and fast.

Phil bites his lip and arches up at the same time, and Clint can’t do anything but sit down hard until Phil is fully seated. It hurts a little – aches, more – and he wants to take a second, get used to it, but his dick has other ideas. He drops onto his hands again, onto his elbows, and rocks back and forth.

Phil gasps and groans, then in some kind of ninja move Clint can’t work out how he didn’t see coming, rolls them over, and if Clint thought he was in deep before, no, this is better. He feels like Phil’s dick might split him open, but his mouth is saying _fuck, more_ and his hand is between them to grab his balls because he doesn’t want to come yet. “Jesus, Phil. Can you—“

He has no idea what he even wants to ask for, but fortunately Phil has good ideas; he pulls Clint’s knees up and all but folds him in half without slowing down. It forces Clint’s hand away, and also forces his cock to rub between them and faster than he even thought he could, Clint is coming, spurting on his belly and his chin and up onto Phil’s throat.

He pulls Phil down to lick up the mess on his neck, and Phil pushes in hard and freezes, dick twitching as he comes.

Clint lets his legs drop open and wide, exhausted, and keeps working his lips on Phil’s throat for a few seconds, then drops his head back against the tile. “Holy shit.”

“Maybe next time, in the bed,” Phil mutters, although he’s making no move to get up. 

Clint isn’t either. “I dunno, if it’s like that, I am _fine_ with fucking on the floor every day,” Clint says. “We can get a yoga mat for our knees.” He closes his eyes and tries to decide how he feels about just _sleeping_ on the floor.

Phil laughs and pushes up a little, reaching between them to manage the condom as he pulls out. “That might have been a ‘we’ve been waiting for months’ kind of event, though, and I don’t think I want to wait months again. Stay there.” He gets up and goes into the kitchen, runs some water on paper towels and comes back. “Oh. Hi,” he says.

Clint opens his eyes to look up, then follows Phil’s gaze. The door, never properly closed, is being pushed open by a bedraggled-looking cat who is frozen mid-push.

“Probably we should close the door next time,” Phil says, gently encouraging the cat back out (this fails; the cat is very thin and doesn’t need much room, so it comes in and wanders into the kitchen instead) and closing it now.

“Maybe.” Clint reaches for the paper towels then levers himself up with a wince.

“Okay?”

“Completely. Entirely. More than.” He pulls Phil in for a kiss then cleans up a little and goes to toss the towels in the kitchen because sure, the cat can stay if it needs a place and all, but probably letting it wander loose isn’t the best call? He finds it sitting in front of the refrigerator washing its face. “Hey you.”

The cat offers a somewhat disdainful meow and keeps washing until Clint gets together a water dish and a plate with some tuna from the cabinet. He’s confident the cat can smell the fish, so he takes the whole thing into the (still mostly unfurnished) spare room and sets it on the floor. Two seconds later he realizes Phil has found a box and some shredded paper that won’t work as a permanent litterbox but might do well enough for now, and they stand in the door watching the cat work on the tuna.

“We make a pretty good team,” Phil says.

“We do, although one five-minute session of joint cat-herding may not be a particularly comprehensive way to decide that.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know.”

Clint goes and gets a couple of towels and a blanket to put in the spare room between boxes of his crap, then closes the cat in and catches Phil’s hand. “So, like, bed?”

“Maybe dinner?”

“Fine, yeah, we might need the energy later.”

“Or we might just want not to wake up with a headache from dehydration and not having eaten all day, but maybe that’s just me.” Phil moved toward Clint’s bedroom anyway. “You have some sweatpants I can borrow so we don’t scare the deliveryperson?”

Clint grabs a pair for each of them and shuffles out to the couch with a blanket and the remote. “Come on. We can order from my phone, and I want cuddles.”

\--

“Yeah?” 

Clint squints over at where Phil is on the phone, then looks at the clock. Okay, 4:48 in the morning isn’t _always_ a bad time. For example, when he has his ankle between Phil’s calves and a lot of warm firm skin pressed up against him from behind, it’s pretty good.

Phil says a few more words, then hands up. “Melanie,” he says.

“She okay?”

“Euphoric. Cole Francis Chambers arrived an hour or so ago. And yes, because that’s how she rolls, she went and found out your middle name on purpose.”

“She named her _baby_ after me? I like, barely even know her!”

“After both of us. Greg would approve. Also she wants us to come by, meet the little guy in a couple of days.”

“Um, but babies?”

“You can adopt a cat, I think you can handle it.”

And okay, that’s basically true. Clint reaches back to pull Phil’s arm over him, and snuggles back against him.


End file.
